Spirits of the Season - Cast On

 

Continuing my tradition of working past Advent Kits, this is the 2019 Craftvent kit from Jimmy Beans Wool.  I cast this on last Saturday as well.  Even though I get these advent kits, I don’t always abide by the open daily rule, especially if I’m not going to be working it during the intended month.  This was the first year that Jimmy Beans used the tins with magnetic bottoms on the steel plate.

I opened all of the tins and pulled out the goodies and put them into my Namaste Maker’s case.  When I discovered the mohair main color, I hunted down all of those mini-skeins and put them in a plastic bag for disposal.  I do not do mohair.  I then found another gray skein to use for the main color - a skein of Sunshine Yarns Classic Sock in Edwards Volvo.  Even though I have the pattern in electronic form and even set it up in knitCompanion I am knitting this one from the cards.  Sometimes old school is better.

Here is my progress to date.  I am currently working Day 12.  The contrast colors so far:

CC1 - Spun Right Round Merino Singles - Belly Flop

CC2 - the periwinkle sheep merino single - You Are Loved

CC3 - Hedgehog Fibres Sock - Birthday Cake

CC4 - madelinetosh Tosh Sock - Hosta Blue

I did not have a slip of paper with CC1 to tell me what the color was, only the information on the card in the tin, which at least identified the yarn.  I pulled the color name from the project page of another knitter.  Once I finish up with my four knit rows I’ll be starting on CC4.  I am weaving my ends in as I go, and carrying the main color up the side rather than cutting it.

Pattern:  Spirits of the Season by Amy Gunderson

Yarn:  Various fingering weight

Needle:  US 6 (4 mm)

Elinya - Cast On

 

Lately I have been pulling some of my fingering weight skeins out from deep stash and trying to use them.  I’ve been working on a small collection of skeins from Alcidina, five total.  So far I have used three in projects.  This is the fourth.  Here are the skeins prior to caking.

The one on the left is the Alcidina skein, the base is Lightyears LF (light fingering) and the color is Spotlight.  The other skein is from Sundara Yarns Super Sock, Dangerously Delphinium.  I wanted a dead simple pattern to work on during work while reading documents and during meetings and this one definitely fits the bill.  It is another Ambah O’Brien pattern and it is just garter stitch stripes with increases every row.  I do like the way that my colors are playing together.  The pattern calls for more of the rose yarn, which is perfect, as that skein has more yardage.

Pattern:  Elinya by Ambah O’Brien

Yarn:  Alcidina Lightyears LF and Sundara Yarns Super Sock

Needle:  US 5 (3.75 mm)

Observatory MKAL - Finished!

 

I finished this up last Saturday, but this past week has been a long one, work-wise, and I haven’t had the energy to post.  It is a challenging shawl to get a good picture of.

This is the final clue.  We could use any of our colors that we wanted, so long as we had enough yarn (at least 25 grams).  The only two skeins I had enough of were A and C.  I wen with A as I had the most of it and I did not want to play yarn chicken.  The pattern calls for tassels, which I haven’t added yet.

Blocking wasn’t too challenging, I just laid it out and smoothed things into position.  I only pinned the tail out (clue 7).  My husband thinks it looks like a rocket ship taking off, others have seen fish or a mermaid tail.

Pattern:  Observatory MKAL by Larissa Brown

Yarn:  Zen Yarn Garden Superfine Fingering 

Needle:  US 5 (3.75 mm)

Box of Chocolates - Clue 6 Done

 

Once more we have two weeks to complete this clue, but it was straight forward and didn’t take me long at all, even with all the other projects I am working on.  I finished up the clue this past Thursday (18 February) and then was pondering what I could work on while waiting for the next Observatory MKAL clue to drop, when it dropped.   I am enjoying this one.  The knitting is really pretty easy, and I like the use of color.  Next week I get to bring in my third color.

Pattern:  Box of Chocolates MKAL by Hilary Latimer

Yarn:  Sunshine Yarns Classic Sock

Needle:  US 5 (3.75 mm)

Celestial Socks - Cast On

 

This pattern has been sitting on my sewing table for ages, an old fashioned print out, and the yarn is the very first item on my stash page and has been taunting me to knit it up.  I haven’t knit socks in ages, so I thought I would cake it up and cast on.  I considered learning two-at-a-time, but I thought I should get back into the sock knitting groove before I tackled that.  When I pulled the pattern out of the protective sleeve I discovered there were actually two patterns - the Celestial Socks and the Void Socks.  Turns out I have the yarn for the Void Socks as well, so I dug that out of my stash.  Then I had to track down my 2.25 mm needles.  According to my Needle Inventory on Ravelry I had several sets.  I checked my project page and discovered that the ones that I wanted were being used in my Pippi Short Stockings - a basic sock I was knitting out of left overs from a Blue Moon Fiber Arts Rocking Sock Club.  I hadn’t worked on that one since 2017, so I frogged the half of a foot I had knit up, and tucked the yarn into a zip-lock bag to keep it safe.

Pattern:  Celestial Socks by Melanie Gibbons

Yarn:  SW, N Quasi-Solido

Needle:  US 1 (2.25 mm)

Oceanic Blanket - January

 

The other Jimmy Beans club that I joined this year is the 2021 Blanket Club.  I have joined once in the past, when they were doing colors inspired by the Zodiac, but I never knit that blanket because it was just too boring.  There is both a knit and a crochet pattern with the club.  I am doing the crochet pattern.  You get a skein a month and crochet two squares.  It appears that the pattern will be the same, judging from the February PDF and the pictures of the blanket.  The pattern calls for a 5.5 mm hook, but I used a 5 mm hook.  My square came out to 9 inches, while the pattern calls for 10 inches, but I like how mine came out.  I used about 40 grams of yarn out of a 97 gram skein.  Now I just need to make another one, and I need to finish it soon, the February skein is on its way.  The yarn is Malabrigo Rios, which I’ve not worked with before, and the color this month is Magenta.

Pattern:  Oceanic Blanket by Shelly Husband

Yarn:  Malabrigo Rios

Hook:  US H (5 mm)

Arrowhead Shawl - Cast On & Month One Done

Sometime around the beginning of the month I also cast on my Jimmy Beans Shawl of the Month Club Shawl.  I was feeling a need for a simple project and this one filled the bill, and having recently finished the shawl from last year, I had a set of needles that were the right size with nothing on them.  I’ve done these shawls for the past two years, but I have always waited until I have all of the yarn and then I blast the shawl out in a few weeks.  This year I decided to try a different approach - to work the shawl each month, as the yarn comes.  So, here is the first month.  A nice simple pattern, although some folks were apparently over-thinking it and got themselves confused.

I chose ChiWei’s Choice for my color palette.  The first color is Modern Fair Isle.

Pattern:  Arrowhead Shawl by ChiWei Ranck

Yarn:  Madelintosh Tosh Merino Light + Tweed

Needle:  US 5 (3.75 mm)

 

Observatory MKAL - Clue 6 and 7 Done

Somehow I managed to skip clue 6 and went straight to clue 7 in my blog posts, so I’m updating this one to include both.  The top picture is clue 6.  This one had more of the “shooting stars”.  I picked a light amber/copper bead for these.

This is clue 7.  The biggest challenge of this clue was deciding on the beads for the final section of shooting stars.  I knew that I didn’t have enough of the light amber/copper beads that I had been using.  I ended up with some berry lined amber beads.  They have a subtler color than the others, they pick up the purple.  It will be interesting to see how this ends, as I don’t have very much of my color D left at this point.

Pattern:  Observatory MKAL by Larissa Brown

Yarn:  Zen Yarn Garden Superfine Fingering

Needle:  US 5 (3.75 mm)

 

Claude - Body Done!

I actually got the body, and even a couple of the tentacles, done over my Thanksgiving holiday.  In fact I worked on it so much and so intently that I ended up with really bad muscle cramps in my right arm and right hand and both of my shoulders.  It didn’t really hit me until I stopped working on it one evening, and then it was pretty bloody awful.  Needless to say I set this aside for a little while to let things recover and when I picked it back up I limited how much I worked on it at any one sitting.  At that point I was doing the tentacles, so I would limit myself to a single tentacle at a time.  Then this past Monday I was in some meetings and felt like crocheting, so I finished up the last three tentacles.  All I have left now are the eyes.

Here is the underside. My tension is not quite as tight as it should be on the tentacles and there are places, mostly on the underside, where you can see the filling, and some of the gaps are kind of big.  Big enough that I don’t think I want to give this to a toddler with little pokey fingers.  Oh well.  Maybe I will just keep it and let it sit on my piano.  It has been a lot of fun to make, and I will definitely make more crochet critters.

Pattern:  Claude the Octopus by Kate E. Hancock

Yarn:  Adrienne Vittadini Dianna

Hook:  G (4 mm)

 

Box of Chocolates - Clue 5 Done

I finished this yesterday, just in time for Clue 6 to come out today.  I had no problems with this one, no ripping back.  I actually thought it was pretty straight forward, despite all of the warnings in the pattern about how non-intuitive it was and how there was a leap of faith.  Nope.  Seemed pretty intuitive to me, I could see just where it was going.  I stuck with pattern B again.  It used a stitch that I’ve done in other shawls where you slip a stitch, knit, yarn over knit the next two stitches and then passed that slipped stitch over.  But in this case you didn’t do that yarn over right away.  You slipped a stitch, knit two stitches, and then passed the slipped stitch over them.  Then on the wrong side row coming back you did a purl, yarn over, purl into those two stitches.  It has the effect of keeping that yarn over from getting swallowed up, which I like.  I’ll have to remember it.

Pattern:  Box of Chocolates MKAL by Hilary Latimer

Yarn:  Sunshine Yarns Classic Sock

Needle:  US 5 (3.75 mm)

 

Box of Chocolates - Clue 4 Done

 

I also finished up Clue 4 of Box of Chocolates.  I did have a false start and had to rip back, but once I got myself sorted and understood the pattern it went smoothly.  She only has written instructions for the lace, which I really don’t care for, so I sketched out the lace on graph paper to try to figure out which option I wanted to knit.  I also wait and see the pictures in the spoiler thread.  So far I’ve been sticking with Pattern B.  I’m not one for markers, but I do place the additional ones that are called for in the pattern.  I tried it without, and that is what got me into trouble on the first go of this clue.  As an aside, I do place markers when working Larissa Brown’s patterns - they are essential - but most of the time I do no use markers, or life lines.

Pattern:  Box of Chocolates MKAL by Hilary Latimer

Yarn:  Sunshine Yarns Classic Sock

Needle:  US 5 (3.75 mm)

Observatory MKAL - Clue 5 Done

 

Clue 5 had more nupps, and introduced Color D, which is purple.  I replaced the nupps with beads again.  This time I placed the beads on the wrong side row, placing them on stitch and then purling the stitch.  So, on the right side row I did not do the increases to make the nupps, just knit, and then on the wrong side where I would have been purling all of those stitches that I didn’t make together to make a nupp I placed a bead and purled.

Here is a shot of most of the shawl so far.  Interesting shape, and wonderful colors.

Pattern:  Observatory MKAL by Larissa Brown

Yarn:  Zen Yarn Garden Superfine Fingering

Needle:  US 5 (3.75 mm)